Extracted

by Tyler H. Jolley & Sherry D. Ficklin

  LEX

  I never thought I’d be crawling on my hands and knees through the Tesla Institute air ducts with my sister’s boyfriend. I wish I could be crawling behind Stein instead. At least it would be a nice view.

  The ducts are cramped and hotter than the tunnels under the Institute. I don’t like being the second-in-command, especially to a Tesla Institute student. Stopping at a slatted grate in the floor of the hard metal duct, Ethan says, “Here it is. My room.”

  Following him, I quietly lower myself onto his desk.

  “Lookin’ a little green there, buddy,” I say. From the other side of the room, Ethan shrugs, leaning against the wall for support. He really does look like he’s about to spew chunks.

  He leans his head back and closes his eyes. “This is your fault. You and those stupid green pills. Why can’t you just use tech to rift like a civilized person?”

  I can’t help laughing. “Did you just compare me to a civilized person?”

  He lowers his head and looks at me. “Good point. What’s in those pills anyway?”

  “Trust me, you don’t want to know. But this batch was stronger. There wasn’t a jump date programmed, so it just sort of threw us in. Glad you knew where we were going. Which reminds me. What was Ember saying about breaking your leg?”

  He crosses the room and pulls a brass panel cover off the wall, exposing a junction box beneath. “Almost breaking my leg. Believe it or not, your sister can pack a serious wallop when she’s got half a mind to.” He grins before pulling a wire from the wall and stripping the rubber coating off with his teeth. Spitting the remnants on the floor, he adds, “Welcome to my humble abode. Don’t touch anything.”

  I make a point to kick an electronic tablet off the edge of his desk as I jump to the ground. “Sorry.”

  His room is clean, freakishly so. Nothing is out of place. On the desk is a handheld video game system, a few books that look like they are about to fall apart, and a multi-tool, which I slip into my pocket.

  “I mean it, sticky fingers. Hands off my stuff.”

  Rolling my eyes, I put it back. Then, on a shelf not far away, I see a red velvet bag sticking out from behind a jar of metal scraps. Ethan is busy twisting wires together, so I take a look. Upon dumping the bag upside down, a small necklace falls into my palm.

  It’s a small, black-and-white pendant shaped like an hourglass. “A little girly for you, isn’t it?” I say, holding it by the chain.

  Ethan snorts. “It isn’t mine.”

  “Is it my sister’s?”

  “Yeah. I snuck it out of her room before her rift test. If things went sideways…” He pauses, his face puckering. “Well, let’s just say I wanted to be sure Tesla didn’t throw it away. Don’t worry; I’ll get it back where it belongs without her ever noticing it was gone.”

  I stuff it back in the bag and toss it aside. “What’s the deal with you and my sister?”

  He pauses, looking confused. “What? Are you really asking me what my intentions with your sister are? What are you, the key holder to her chastity belt?”

  I shrug. “Color me overprotective.”

  Ethan cracks a grin. “That’s a bit of an understatement, isn’t it?”

  “Hey,” I say, crossing the room to level a glare at him. “I’m trying. And considering you and yours have spent the last five years trying to kill me and mine, I think that’s pretty good.”

  He stands, raises his hands into the air, and steps back. “Fair enough, I suppose. Your sister and I have been friends since the day she arrived. She’s the first person I’ve ever known who really sees me. The good parts and bad parts. And she accepts them both.” He picks up the bag and dumps the necklace into his palm. Picking it up, he lets it spin in the light before putting it away. “When she found you, I knew she was leaving me to get you back. The thought of not seeing her face again or, even worse, facing her someday as an enemy…”

  I roll my head to the side, cracking my neck, and grunt. “I get that.”

  “So are we good? Can we get this done now? Or should we talk about our feelings some more?” he asks.

  “Just waiting on you,” I snap.

  “Instead of trying to steal my stuff, you could help me with this panel,” Ethan says, putting me back in my place. He’s right. I’m wasting time being petty. If we survive this, there will be plenty of time to be petty later.

  “In my closet, there is a phonograph with a remote sitting by it,” Ethan says.

  “Do you want me to get it?” I ask.

  Ethan scowls at me and points to the closet. I reluctantly meander over to where the phonograph and remote are stored. I notice his closet is organized by color, short sleeve versus long, and leather versus cotton. What a dork.

  The phonograph is surprisingly heavy. I put the remote device in my pocket so I can get both hands on it.

  “Thanks for letting me manhandle this thing by myself,” I say.

  “You are most certainly welcome, good fellow,” he says, sarcasm glazing his words. “Just bring it over here.”

  I slide the vintage record player near the door. “You know how these work?” he asks.

  “Are you kidding? We had one on every floor back home. I loved these things.”

  “Well, this one is special. It works in reverse.” He runs his fingers along the edge of the brass horn piece. “You know Tesla invented the radio?”

  “No, should I?”

  “This one is my own design. Let me see the remote.”

  Ethan takes the brass button remote box from me and hooks two wires from the freshly dissected wall panel into the back of the phonograph.

  “This is going to create radio waves that will jam Tesla. It will disrupt all his active systems on this floor. I’ve managed to keep us in his blind spots this far, but it will allow us to move around more freely without being picked up on his scans.”

  “You know,” I say, fiddling with a piece of metal on his desk. “For a guy loyal to Tesla, you sure have a good handle on how to disable him.”

  Ethan shrugs. “When you spend your life under the constant eye of Big Brother and you want to have any privacy at all, you learn to skirt the rules a little.”

  He angles the phonograph toward his desk, aims the remote control box back at the horn, and presses a button. Slowly, the machine begins to spin beneath the needle, but no music comes out. Instead, the notes are being fed into the computer.

  “Okay. It’s activated,” he announces, replacing the panel.

  “You mean your brain in a bottle, Tesla, is going to be blind and deaf? Cool.” A reluctant tingle of pride and excitement makes the hair on my arms stand up.

  “We have three minutes until the cameras come back online. Put this on.”

  He hands me a gas mask from the shelf. The old leather is soft and worn. I slip the straps over my head and adjust the fit. “If everyone is at the initiation, or whatever, why do I have to wear this?” I ask, rubbing the cloudy lenses with my sleeve and taking a deep breath.

  “In case I’m wrong and someone is wandering around. Let’s go.”

  The door groans open, and we slip into the hall. It’s empty, as he promised it would be. The fact that he hasn’t led me straight into a trap bodes well for his continued breathing. We reach another door when he stops, pulling another panel free. Inside, the wires have been crossed and re-crossed. Carefully, he touches one to another and the door slides open. I step inside first.

  The room smells like her. I remember. When we were little, I had to share a room with Anya and Maria. Maria always smelled like sticky sweet cakes and honey, but Anya was more like warmth and sunshine.

  Her bed is made, but it’s still messy, as if she just pulled the blanket up over a tangle of sheets. There are energy bar wrappers balled up on the floor around a trash bin, and, like in Ethan’s room, there are piles and piles of books.

  She never was a tidy one.

  On top of her dre
sser is a small wooden box with vines carefully carved into the dark surface. Cracking it open, I get a glimpse of what at first reminds me of Mother’s jewels. I pick up a smooth, red shard and fiddle with it between my fingers.

  “Sea glass,” Ethan says, taking the piece from my fingers. “Sometimes when we get free time, they let us go to the beach. She’ll spend hours combing the sand for just one little piece. Just sort of slow and patient. It’s interesting to watch actually. When she finds a piece, her whole face lights up.”

  I stare at the box full of rainbow glass. “She always had a soft spot for pretty things, even things other people thought of as trash.” I got that from her. My need to collect things. My hand goes to my empty pocket involuntarily.

  “Here,” Ethan says, putting the box back and pointing across the room. On a Peg-Board near her bed, a dozen keys hang randomly from hooks.

  I sigh. “Can’t make it easy, can she?”

  Ethan shakes his head. “Give me a second. She described it to me. A shiny brass key with an oval at the end, with little spirals inside the oval. I think…” He runs his hands over the keys until it closes on one. “Ah. It’s this one.”

  I make a face, which is stupid since he can’t see it under the mask. “Are you sure? Maybe we should take them all, just in case?”

  “No, it’s this one. I’m sure.”

  I eye the rest of the keys. “Look, it’s not that I don’t trust you, but—”

  “You don’t trust me,” he finishes.

  “Pretty much, yeah.”

  He shrugs. “Whatever.”

  I pocket the remaining keys. No way am I going to risk another botched mission.

  Ethan moves toward the door, only to hold up a hand. There are voices on the other side.

  “It’s fine,” I say. “We’ll just rift out from here.”

  Then someone—a girl—screams. I rip off the gas mask. Ethan hits the pad beside the door with his fist and rushes into the hall. I’m close behind. My initial fear is that it’s Ember. But it isn’t. It’s a blonde-haired girl, and she’s running toward us. A massive cyclone has appeared in the middle of the hallway, and it’s moving in our direction. The girl nearly makes it to Ethan’s outstretched hand when she’s lifted off the ground and sucked into the heart of the storm. My feet skid forward. Paintings are being ripped off the walls; vases of flowers are hurtling toward the abyss. We stumble backward just as a flock of ravens fly out and over our heads. A split second later, a shaft of lightning strikes, and a lone motorcycle driver in a bedazzled white jumpsuit speeds out, maneuvering between us and down the hallway. I look over at Ethan, who is also struggling to stay on his feet. The things being spit out don’t seem to be affected by the storm, only the things being sucked in. Things like us.

  “Take the Contra,” I yell over the sound of the raging storm. He shakes his head.

  “I want to grab some Tethers. This way.” He motions for me to follow, and we tear off down the hall. He hits another keypad. We step into a large dome room with metal-covered walls. Above us is a row of windows like an observation area. Next to a platform in the middle of the room is a tray full of tech.

  “Here, take this,” he says, handing me a contraption that looks like it’s going to eat my arm. I take it with two fingers, hoping it doesn’t. “Tethers. A much easier way to travel.”

  Then he moves to the wall and punches a code into the brass keypad. The wall slides up, exposing a cache of the devices. He grabs one, attaches it to his arm, then takes two more, stuffing them under his arm.

  He turns to me. “Okay, let’s go.”

  Just then, a hologram appears on the pad beside us. It’s an image of a man—tall, greasy hair, and a weird mustache. I know right away who he is even though I’ve never seen him before.

  “Tesla.” The name hisses like steam through my teeth. The man who stole my family from me, who has been mercilessly hunting down the Hollows for years. The man who started the time war.

  “Identify yourselves,” the image demands, making Ethan turn.

  “Crap. Go,” he commands, plugging the keys on his Tether.

  I shake my head, knowing Ember will kill me if I come back without him. Slipping the Contra in my mouth, I grab him by the arm and we vanish in the time stream. The last thing I see is holographic Tesla, his face contorting with rage as he reaches for us.